1663 -- Papa Bear?: John Dryden, 32, marries Elizabeth Howard, the daughter of the first Earl of Berkshire. She bears him three sons.

1817 -- Walter Scott, oft considered both the inventor & greatest practitioner of the historical novel, sees anonymous publication of Rob Roy. Demand was huge & a whole ship from Leith to London bulged with nothing but an entire edition of the book. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Roy_%28novel%29

1847 -- Julia Davis Moore lives. A “mortuary poet” & competitor for the most famous bad poet in the history of US literature. Drawn to themes of accident, disaster, & sudden death she was said to be "worse than a Gatling gun". Hopefully “The Sweet Singer of Michigan” had a better voice. A favorite of Mark Twain, who was inspired by her to create the character of Emmeline Grangerford in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

1860 -- The first installment of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations is published in All the Year Round.

from the poem Leichen im Priesterwald,
“Corpses in the Bois-des-Prêtres,”
from the collection Vormorgen.

1895 -- Henry Williamson, lives, Bedfordshire. English novelist best known for his sensitive but unsentimental handling of nature themes. Best known for four novels published under the title of The Flax Dream (1936), but it is Tarka the Otter, however, that establishes his reputation.

When the anti-Communist hysteria of the late 1940s & 1950s began, Stout was a logical target. He found himself targeted by members of the American Legion, as well as Hoover's FBI. As journalist Herbert Mitgang found when he obtained access to Stout's FBI files for his book Dangerous Dossiers (1988), Stout was one of many writers on Hoover's private enemies list. Stout's FBI file runs to 300 pages (though the FBI would only release 183 heavily blacked-out pages to Mitgang).

But Stout wasn't afraid, knowing that he could rely on both independent means & the love of the public. In 1965, Stout fought back with his novel The Doorbell Rang, in which Nero Wolfe found himself locked in a duel of wits with the FBI. & as any reader of the Nero Wolfe books — especially The Doorbell Rang — knows, in a battle of wits between Wolfe & anyone else, never bet against the fat man.

1908 -- While the politicos in Brazil & Argentina threaten war between the two countries, worker's organizations & anarcho-sindicalistas of these two Latin American countries express their cross-border solidarity, & jointly organize a day of protest against the possibility of a conflict.
http://www.anarchie.be/AL/20/histoire.htm

1911 -- US: John & James McNamara plead guilty to bombing the Los Angeles Times building; admission of guilt creates controversy among their supporters who believed them to be innocent. Emma Goldman defends their action in a Mother Earth editorial.

1914 -- US: Famed labor song "Solidarity Forever" written by IWW songwriter Ralph Chaplin for a hunger march to be lead by anarchist Lucy Parsons in Chicago (on January 17, 1915).
aka Lucy Ella Gonzales Parsons

When the union's inspiration through worker's blood shall run,
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,
For the union makes us strong.
[Chorus]
Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite
Who would lash us into serfdom & would crush us with his might?
is there anything left to us but to organize & fight?
For the union makes us strong
[Chorus]
In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,
Greater than the might of armies magnified a thousand fold;
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old,
For the union makes us strong.
[Chorus]: Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever,
For the union makes us strong

1919 -- US: Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman & 200+ anarchists, labor militants, & radicals are forced to leave the "Land of the Free," deported to Russia on the rust-bucket Buford. Shades of B. Traven's The Death Ship. In America it is axiomatic that we have free speech only if no one practices it.

Early this month Goldman & Berkman settle in Riga, Latvia. They write to Harry Weinberger about chances of getting back into the US. Allowed only a temporary visa in Latvia, they seek entry to either Germany or Sweden. They are granted Swedish visas on December 14th, & enroute to Germany, on a train on the 22nd they are arrested by the Latvian secret service; accused of being Bolshevik agents.

1931 -- Russia: With the failure of Nepreryvka, the five-day week, the Soviet authorities attempt ... the six-day week! [1931] - see 26 August & 23 November. Like the five-day week, this measure is sabotaged by workers & peasants taking both the banned Sundays & the new rest days off.
Source: [Calendar Riots]

1955 -- US: Rosa Parks, an African American, gets busted, refusing to give her bus seat in front to a white man & sit in the back, in Montgomery, Alabama. Sets off a successful year-long bus boycott by blacks & sparks the Civil Rights movement of the next decade.

1963 -- France (?): After having established the new clandestine structure of the youth organization Federación Ibérica de Juventudes Libertarias (FIJL), the "provisional" Commission of
Relations began preparations for today's extraordinary Congress.
[Details / context]

1964 -- US: Martin Luther King speaks to J. Edgar Hoover about his slander campaign. (Edgar is secretly thrilled at this "dressing down.")

1966 -- US: Nursing Grievances? The Youngstown General Duty Nurses Association (YGDNA) becomes the first nurses in Ohio to engage in a mass resignation or "strike," & according to the American Nurses Association it may be the first concerted action by nurses in a labor dispute in the nation. Nearly 350 of the 400 nurses sign resignations.http://cwcs.ysu.edu/resources/cwcs-projects/culture/first-nurses-strike-ohio

1967 -- Mad River & the Santana Blues Band appeared at the Straight Theatre, San Francisco.

1968 -- Vietnam: American C-123 develops engine trouble, lightens its load by spraying a full tank of defoliants over two South Vietnamese towns, causing "deaths & widespread birth defects."

1968 -- US: Public release of Rights in Conflict, commonly called the Walker Report.

The National Commission on the Causes & Prevention of Violence, charged with studying & reporting on urban riots, formed a Chicago Study Team headed by Daniel Walker, to investigate the Convention Week disturbances.

They reviewed over 20,000 pages of statements from 3,437 eyewitnesses & participants, 180 hours of film, & over 12,000 still photographs. The Walker Report attached the label "police riot" to the events of Chicago '68. Read an excerpt—the summary to Rights in Conflict.

1970 -- Independent People's Republic of South Yemen becomes the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. In honor of this auspicious occasion, twice the number of the usual suspects have been rounded up we suspect.

1970 -- 5,000 protest South Vietnamese Vice President Ky's visit to San Francisco.

1971 -- Muhammed Ali sees a UFO while jogging in New York's Central Park. (Jogging will do that to you?)

"It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up."

1987 -- In Saint-Paul de Vence, France, American essayist, novelist, & playwright James Baldwin dies. Said little about his childhood, commenting only that it "is the usual bleak fantasy, & we can dismiss it with the unrestrained observation that I certainly would not consider living it again."

"Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent."

— James Baldwin, "Autobiographical Notes" from Notes of a Native Son, 1955

1987 -- England: Department of Trade inspectors are ordered into the giant Guinness company to investigate allegations of misconduct which ends up with four arrests being made, including the chairman Ernest Saunders.

1988 -- Switzerland: World AIDS Day founded by World Health Organization, Geneva.

1997 -- Sudan: A silent march of women, protesting conscription, is met by a police attack & the arrest of 37 women. Khartoum.

1997 --

Swimming through the pages of her prose, crude drawings & the poetic license of profanity, Kathy Acker gutted every sacred cow; politicians, pimps, feminists, men, her dreams, slabs of the autobiographical, emotional self-mutilation & self-loathing. She sometimes appeared like a lost child teetering on the abyss & at others the winged avenging angel with a scythe for a tongue.

An acquaintance of BleedMeister when she lived in Seattle, & friend of some Bleed subscribers, dies.

She & my old friend Jim Logie were lovers, & frequently visited Left Bank Books while I worked there. She was a great performance artist.

Following her death a friend in San Francisco wrote me:

"At 1 am Kathy died peacefully, surrounded by friends. She had been fighting cancer for months &, while very weak, was in no pain & quite lucid as she went. We'll miss Kathy, but it was time for both her & her friends to let go."

Her writing influences knew few bounds, ranging from Dickens (her own Great Expectations, written in Seattle) to the cut-up methods of William Burroughs. There are numerous links online, & these are a good start:
The gift of disease — Kathy's writing on her cancer no longer appears to be online (2005).
Interview: http://www.altx.com/io/acker.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Acker

1999 -- Illustration: "Police," by R. CobbUS: WTO Day Two: World Trade Organization delegates, after a "warm" welcome yesterday in Seattle, ("It was a gas") unable to meet because of protesters, attempt to meet again.

Last night a "civil emergency" was declared & a curfew imposed overnite after the facades of several stores (Nike Superstore, The Gap, Starbucks, Radio Shack, et al) are instantly redesigned. Today the downtown area is cordoned off by police, National Guard units brought in. Shoppers flee to the malls. Protests have also occurred around the world as well, including London, Paris, NY & San Francisco.

2001 -- Turkey: Got AAA insurance?: Two anarchists arrested by the Ushak police (in western Anatolia), after distributing 'illegal' leaflets at a trade union meeting. Later, another three are arrested. All are charged with 'membership in an illegal organization' — in this case, the Autonomous Anarchists of Ankara.
http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/turkey2001.htm